Loughborough University
Institutional Repository
Creativity on the manuscript
page: William Wordsworth's
Diaries Notebook (DC MS
19)
This item was submitted to Loughborough University's Institutional Repository
by the/an author.
VAN MIERLO, W., 2014. Creativity on the manuscript page:
William Wordsworth's Diaries Notebook (DC MS 19). Manuscript of the Month,
02/2014
Citation:
Additional Information:
• This paper is available online at: https://www.manuscript-cultures.unihamburg.de/mom/2014_02_mom_e.html
Metadata Record:
Version:
Accepted for publication
Publisher:
Hamburg
https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/22153
Centre for the Studies of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC), Universit
at
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BYNC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync-nd/4.0/
Rights:
Please cite the published version.
Connecting the creative mind to paper: William Wordsworth’s Diaries Notebook (DC MS 19)
Unprepossessing and tattered from use, the small, black-covered notebook which contains the
earliest known version of William Wordsworth (1770-1850) great autobiographical poem The
Prelude is a manuscript that speaks to the imagination. One of the prized treasures of The
Wordsworth Museum at Dove Cottage, Grasmere (DC MS 19), the notebook was a cheap, ordinary,
ephemeral affair; and despite being designated “Diaries”, written on a paper label on the front cover,
its original intended use was to be merely practical. So why was it so significant that it was worth
preserving?
We know the exact circumstances in which Wordsworth acquired the notebook. It was purchased,
with four others just like it, from a stationers shop in Bristol for just 1 shilling, when the poet and his
sister Dorothy were preparing for an extended tour of Germany in 1798-99 in the company of their
friend S. T. Coleridge. Coleridge had masterminded the tour. He wanted “to meet scientists,
theologians, and moral philosophers” and eventually ended up by himself in Göttingen, Germany’s
intellectual centre in the eighteenth century, while Dorothy and William Wordsworth settled down
for 5 months in Goslar, the historic town in the Harz Mountains. They had heard Goslar was cheap,
but the secluded, rough, mountainous region would have reminded Wordsworth of his native
Cumberland too.
The Diaries Notebook is much more than a personal journal: it contains the “record” of their German
sojourn. It opens with an account, written by Dorothy, of the siblings’ rather strenuous journey to
Hamburg, where they had landed from England on 19 September. Having practically no German, and
with little money to spare, their stay in the city was far from pleasant: Dorothy complains bitterly
about rude landlords and shopkeepers who took advantage of the fact that they were foreigners and
over-charged for food and accommodation.
While in Hamburg, Wordsworth visited the great poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock on no less than
three occasions (twice with Coleridge in tow). They conversed in French about the history of German
poetry, blank verse, Rousseau, Kant, Schiller and Wieland; yet, as the notes reveal that he hurriedly
set down in DC MS 19, Wordsworth seemed most intent on pressing him for his views on the great
English poets. But Klopstock, it transpired to Wordsworth’s disappointment, did not know much
about English poetry, and Wordsworth was not a little dismayed when Klopstock preferred Richard
Glover over John Milton.
After Coleridge had gone his separate way, the Wordsworths moved to Goslar, where they arrived on
6 October. The winter of 1798-99 was a particularly cold one, and with few acquaintances around,
they led a quiet, fairly isolated existence. There was little to do but to work indoors. Brother and
sister started learning German, diligently recording German vocabulary in the Diaries Notebook.
William complained about the lack of access to books. Inadvertently this made him more
productive. Much of the thinking and writing that he did during this period during ended up in DC
MS 19.
The notebook thus not only served for general notetaking and the recording of experiences. For
William in particular it became a place for reflection. He began to compose an “Essay on Morals” in
which he purports to know of no system of moral philosophy that has the “power to melt in our
affection[?s]”; and therefore are unable to influence our habits and actions. Not a great advocate of
systems of thought, however, Wordsworth appears not to have finished the piece. The essay breaks
off mid sentence and is followed by 5 leaves which were torn out of the notebook. Nonetheless, this
philosophical fragment is evidence of Wordsworth intellectual preoccupations which the notebook
captures. One can surmise that the poet’s mind during this lonely, productive winter was turning
towards the great project of his life (which was also his single greatest failure) – a colossal
philosophical poem to be called The Recluse.
The poem was to be an investigation of “my most interesting feelings concerning Man, Nature, and
society”. But in order to tackle this subject with insight, he needed to understand the origins of it,
which he thought – at 28 years of age – lay in the history and growth of his own mind. What was to
become one of the greatest poems from the Romantic period, The Prelude was on the one hand, as
Wordsworth called it, an antechamber to the greater work, and on the other a delving into origins.
In an almost careless hand, Wordsworth wrote down the lines “was it for this | That one, the fairest
of all rivers, loved | To blend his murmurs with my nurse’s song” in the back of his notebook. This
alone practically ensured that the Diaries Notebook was preserved for posterity. The origins of the
poem itself are quite humble: a jumble of poetic fragments that suddenly erupt towards the back of
the notebook, written at different moments and in different moods of inspiration.
Scholars have generally taken the view that Wordsworth inscribed the poem backwards, starting with
“was it for this” on the last page of the notebook. But this view is not entirely sustained by the
evidence in the manuscript, nor is it wholly compatible with the writing practices of other poets. The
handwriting is really heavily variable: sometimes it is small, measured and legible, tending towards
lines that were copied fair from elsewhere; sometimes it is the opposite — rough, blotted, nearly
illegible. Even when the hand is in between it reveals unmistakably the vestiges of the hand trying to
keep up with the mind. The physical evidence points to a very fragmentary procedure.
The manuscript, in others words, puts into relief the lofty notions of inspiration propagated by the
Romantic poets. Several accounts describe Wordsworth’s habit of composition in which he
composed his poems while walking up down the lane outside his house, or sometimes even on
horseback. This is no obfuscation. But the state of the earliest draft of The Prelude, as well as many
of the poet’s other manuscripts, demonstrates that Wordsworth did not transfer his poems whole
from mind to paper. He needed the page to write, to try and to err.
Wim Van Mierlo
References:
COWTON, Jeff and BUSHEL, Sally (eds.) (n.d.): From Goslar to Grasmere—William Wordsworth:
Electronic Manuscripts. http://collections.wordsworth.org.uk/GtoG/home.asp [accessed on 23 May
2014].
PARRISH, Stephen (ed.) (1982) The Cornell Wordsworth. The Prelude, 1798-1799. Cornell: Cornell
University Press.
OWEN, W.J.B. and SMYSER, J. W. (eds.) (1974) The Prose Works of William Wordsworth. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
VAN MIERLO, Wim (2013): “The Archaeology of the Manuscript: Towards Modern Palaeography”. In:
Carrie Smith and Lisa Stead (eds.): The Boundaries of the Literary Archive: Reclamation and
Representation. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 15-29.
WOOF, Pamela (ed.) (2002): The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Description:
Present Holder: The Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere, United Kingdom
Shelfmark: DC MS 19
Material: Small notebook bound in black boards; originally 96 leaves in gatherings of 16, 7 leaves
have been torn out, with stubs remaining. Watermark consists of the words PRO PATRIA, a large crest
and oval circle, with two warriors. Decent quality laid paper with chain lines 2.5cm apart.
Dimensions: c. 9.5 x 15 cm
Provenance: United Kingdom, 1798-1802. Bequest of Gordon Graham Wordsworth, 1935.